All Features
Bill Kalmar
Listening to classic Christmas music on a radio station that labeled the songs as “holiday traditions” certainly brought back memories of holiday traditions from the past. Some of them, in fact, are so traditional they’re in danger of being lost in the mists of time. As such, here is my top 10…
Melinda Plaisier, Michael Landa
We were ready to head out to observe the inspection of a Miami seafood warehouse, but another team of investigators asked that we first look at evidence from their last job. They showed us a video of a huge quantity of rice contaminated with live insects.
Their work, they knew, would prevent…
ASQ
(ASQ: Milwaukee, WI) -- Manufacturers are increasingly positive as 2014 comes to a close, with 83 percent expecting revenue growth next year, up from 64 percent of manufacturers that anticipated growth in 2014, according to results of the ASQ 2015 Manufacturing Outlook Survey.
And their…
NIST
On Dec. 10, 2014, the MIT Technology Review ran a story titled, “How to Measure Planck’s Constant Using Lego,” based on a paper by NIST researchers posted to Cornell University’s arXiv.org site. (“A LEGO Watt Balance: An Apparatus to Demonstrate the Definition of Mass Based on the New SI.” Click…
Dawn Bailey
During the 1980s, Joseph Juran, one of the Baldrige Program’s first overseers, coined the term “Big Q” to serve as a quality “umbrella”: “Little q” would encompass goods and those processes directly related to the manufacture of goods, while “Big Q” would encompass all of an organization’s…
Meredith Griffith
During the last year or so I've heard a lot of people asking, "How can I calculate B10 life in Minitab?" Despite my being a statistician and an industrial engineer (mind you, one who's never actually been in the field) and having taken a reliability engineering course, I'd never heard of B10 life…
Greg Goodwin
Everyone is talking about technology advancements. References to the cloud, mobile, big data, the Internet of things (IoT)—used as central talking points or tangential nuggets that bounce in and out of conversation—are nearly ubiquitous across manufacturing industries. Most professionals seem to…
Mike Simpson
What comes to mind when you hear the word “innovation?” Quick—grab a pen and paper and jot down the first five things that you think about. Many decades ago, I thought of things such as technology, inventions, and the future when someone talked about innovation. The flying cars and robots you’d…
Gary Phillips
All manufacturing companies that get audited require some or all of their calibration certificates to specify the calibration uncertainty. At a minimum, some manufacturers only need certified uncertainty for gauges that are reference standards used to calibrate other gauges. Those companies…
Renishaw
(Renishaw: Hoffman Estates, IL) -- Renishaw's new EZ-IO software for the Equator Flexible Gauge makes it easy for automation integrators to configure communications between Equator systems and a cell controller. EZ-IO software allows intelligent functions, such as automatic re-mastering when the…
Jim Benson
I am in the world’s epicenter of offshoring, Bangalore, India. We just spent several days running a Kaizen Camp and keynoting SolutionIQ’s sold-out Lean India Summit.
Not surprising, the Kaizen Camp surfaced many issues around offshoring or the perils of distributed teams, with which we often…
Michelle LaBrosse
We’ve reached the last month of 2014—can you believe it? This time of year offers many opportunities for getting together with family and friends, but it can also be a stressful time for many. With the approach of the year’s end also comes the pressure to meet end-of-the-year goals, coordinate…
Michael Causey
A
s expected, the FDA is shifting more of its regulatory focus toward medical device reporting (MDR). In an Oct. 1, 2014, letter, the agency’s Baltimore district office hit Baltimore-based Electronic Development Labs for not having a MDR procedure. Bad idea. The company may not have recovered very…
Greg Fox
Greetings, fair reader. In the past, I've written several articles with practical tips related to Minitab graphs, such as how to discuss the sensitive issue of p-charts and Laney P' charts with your doctor; how to use a g-chart to monitor parenting success; and how to use a scatter plot to start…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- As part of an interagency agreement between NIST and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), PML’s Radiation Physics Division recently completed a series of image quality measurements of a high-energy X-ray vehicle-screening system at a newly constructed port of…
Annette Franz
As you think about the customer experience, which impression has the most effect: the first one or the last one? Which one is the lasting impression?
Let’s think for a moment about the customer experience life cycle, particularly when the customer first becomes aware of your brand or products.…
ZEISS Industrial Quality Solutions
(ZEISS: Oberkochen, Germany) -- Experience virtual reality any time, any place: In December 2014, for $99, ZEISS is launching the ZEISS VR ONE, a mobile virtual reality (VR) headset that works with smartphones and features display sizes between 4.7 in. and 5.2 in.
The focus of the development…
Jack Dunigan
‘When you find him, come and tell me so I can worship him, too.”
Those were the now-famous words of Herod, the designated Roman ruler of Judea during the first century of the Common Era. This is not a religious c6340n, and neither is it a Christmas story. It is a leadership article, and if you…
Davis Balestracci
For those of you who are improvement practitioners, are you satisfied with the organizational results of your efforts? I have a feeling most of you would answer, “Far from it,” and would almost unanimously feel that you could be more effective.
There is justification for this. A recent…
Arun Hariharan
Starting with the board and the CEO, the pursuit of quality or excellence is the job of everyone in the organization. Everyone, regardless of seniority or functional role, needs to do their jobs right the first time, meet customer requirements, and figure out ways to continuously improve their…
Frost and Sullivan
(Frost & Sullivan: San Antonio) -- The interest in mobile enterprise applications among businesses across North America is increasing. The amount of respondent companies that reported the deployment of at least one mobile worker application has risen from 73 percent in 2013 to 82 percent this…
Grant Ramaley
Medical device regulators around the world often have to assess the cost of a new regulation. Typically there is a study to determine the financial effect on industry and the public. This information is often supplied to lawmakers in their respective countries before they pass new legislation. In…
Ken Koenemann
As a business leader, you spend a lot of your time figuring out how to win. With good reason: The most crucial job of every executive is to align efforts at every level of the organization to deliver wins for the week, for the quarter, and for the year.
The people at the front end of the business—…
Annette Franz
I wrote about technology and the customer experience a couple times last year. After all, that’s what self-service is all about: technology, such as ATMs, online flight check-in, self-checkout grocery lanes, interactive voice response, online FAQs, knowledge bases, and more.
Technology is an…
Bruker Corp.
(Bruker: Boston) -- At the 2014 MRS Fall Meeting and Exhibit, Bruker announced the release of the UMT TriboLab, the latest generation of the world-leading Universal Mechanical Tester (UMT) platform. TriboLab incorporates into a single, modular platform the full range of performance previously…
